2023-03-29 18:09:52 by ambuda-bot
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SCOPE OF THE GLOSSARY
(VI) SCOPE OF THE GLOSSARY
The following glossary is based on those poetic texts which were composed
during the formative period of Indian poetics: that period during which
the definition of the figure constituted the major problem, situated be-
tween a necessarily vague prehistory, perhaps characterized by specula-
tions on guna/doșa, and the rise in the ninth century of a poetics based on
the dhvani. The glossary attempts to define every figure and sub-figure
discussed in those texts, in accordance with methodological principles
which are set forth in the following section. It may not be out of place
here to indicate the reasons for restricting the scope of the glossary to
the manuals of the early poeticians-excluding the many medieval
writers who postdate the dhvani: Viśvanātha, Hemacandra, Ruyyaka,
Jayadeva, Appayya Dikşita, and Jagannatha, to name the most illustrious.
(a) In part our rationale can be inferred from the preceding discussion
of the appropriateness of the alamkāraśāstra to kavya. To include later
writers would necessitate a greatly increased referential apparatus without
substantially increasing the number of figurative categories treated.
Ruyyaka, for example, treats only four figures not named by the writers
we have included (the rasa figures excepted). Two of them, pariņāma
and ullekha, are in earlier texts, subvarieties of other figures. It is for his
conscious effort to arrange the figures that Ruyyaka is important (see
p. 21 ff.). Hemacandra names none. The later writers, especially Jayadeva,
Appayya, and Jagannātha, add certain figures and elaborate others on the
basis of secondary discriminations. For instance, those of Jayadeva,
accepted also by Appayya and Jagannātha, appear to be a quite late and
thoroughly syncretistic attempt to rescue the guna theory in the alamkāras
(praudhokti, lalita, praharşana). (For an inventory of the figures not
defined in this glossary but found in later writers, see Appendix.)
(b) A more crucial issue is raised by the character of the post-dhvani
poetics itself. It is a thoroughly eclectic poetics, accepting the dhvani or
analogous functions as the essence of poetic expression, yet attempting
to show the dhvani in the entire range of previously elaborated anal-
ytic categories-figures, guņas, and by absence in the doșas—as well as
in those categories which are immediately pertinent to the dhvani. The
tendency of the later poetics was to syncretism and was not, except for
a few writers like Ruyyaka, devoted to questions of definition and ana-
lysis. The figures in this late poetics are often sloppily defined, their
conceptualizations traditional and inconsistent. Mammața, the first of
the post-dhvani encyclopedists (and included in the glossary for that
SCOPE OF THE GLOSSARY
(VI) SCOPE OF THE GLOSSARY
The following glossary is based on those poetic texts which were composed
during the formative period of Indian poetics: that period during which
the definition of the figure constituted the major problem, situated be-
tween a necessarily vague prehistory, perhaps characterized by specula-
tions on guna/doșa, and the rise in the ninth century of a poetics based on
the dhvani. The glossary attempts to define every figure and sub-figure
discussed in those texts, in accordance with methodological principles
which are set forth in the following section. It may not be out of place
here to indicate the reasons for restricting the scope of the glossary to
the manuals of the early poeticians-excluding the many medieval
writers who postdate the dhvani: Viśvanātha, Hemacandra, Ruyyaka,
Jayadeva, Appayya Dikşita, and Jagannatha, to name the most illustrious.
(a) In part our rationale can be inferred from the preceding discussion
of the appropriateness of the alamkāraśāstra to kavya. To include later
writers would necessitate a greatly increased referential apparatus without
substantially increasing the number of figurative categories treated.
Ruyyaka, for example, treats only four figures not named by the writers
we have included (the rasa figures excepted). Two of them, pariņāma
and ullekha, are in earlier texts, subvarieties of other figures. It is for his
conscious effort to arrange the figures that Ruyyaka is important (see
p. 21 ff.). Hemacandra names none. The later writers, especially Jayadeva,
Appayya, and Jagannātha, add certain figures and elaborate others on the
basis of secondary discriminations. For instance, those of Jayadeva,
accepted also by Appayya and Jagannātha, appear to be a quite late and
thoroughly syncretistic attempt to rescue the guna theory in the alamkāras
(praudhokti, lalita, praharşana). (For an inventory of the figures not
defined in this glossary but found in later writers, see Appendix.)
(b) A more crucial issue is raised by the character of the post-dhvani
poetics itself. It is a thoroughly eclectic poetics, accepting the dhvani or
analogous functions as the essence of poetic expression, yet attempting
to show the dhvani in the entire range of previously elaborated anal-
ytic categories-figures, guņas, and by absence in the doșas—as well as
in those categories which are immediately pertinent to the dhvani. The
tendency of the later poetics was to syncretism and was not, except for
a few writers like Ruyyaka, devoted to questions of definition and ana-
lysis. The figures in this late poetics are often sloppily defined, their
conceptualizations traditional and inconsistent. Mammața, the first of
the post-dhvani encyclopedists (and included in the glossary for that